Episode 41: Interview with Audrey Kristoff, Product Specialist at Flower Clique
This week Vonda and Lori turn the microphone toward their own team and interview Audrey Kristoff, Flower Clique's product specialist — and, as of about ten minutes before recording, the company's first-ever employee of the month. Audrey isn't a lifelong florist. She came into the industry from outside it, and that's exactly what makes her perspective so valuable: she sees flower shop owners the way the rest of the world sees them, and she's spent seven and a half years building the systems that make their lives easier.
An outsider's view of flower shop owners
Audrey and Lori go way back — they met in Ohio through their church youth group when their oldest kids were in seventh grade, and there's a famously terrible photo from day three of a sleepless high school retreat that Lori keeps as proof of the friendship. Audrey's background is in education; she taught school, then built organizational and people skills through administrative and leadership roles at her church and in parent organizations. Lori eventually recruited her into the floral world.
When Vonda asks how an outsider views flower shop owners, Audrey's answer gave her goosebumps: she never realized how hard it is to run a small floral business, but the owners she meets "work tirelessly with tenacity and passion" — and the real reason they're there is to touch people with their art and with flowers. Most Flower Clique members are mom-and-pop shops living out a dream or carrying on a family business, and that's what she's come to love about the industry.
The celebration of life book
One of Audrey's projects is coordinating Flower Clique's celebration of life book — a coffee-table-quality sympathy book that members can take to funeral homes. The shop builds a partnership with a funeral director, the director sits down with grieving families, and families order straight from the pictures. It simplifies an emotional decision at a hard time, and it elevates the funeral home's own presentation.
The hosts are clear that any shop can do a version of this on their own — do the designs, hold a photo shoot, arrange it in a book — but quality is everything. A spiral notebook full of snapshots won't do it; families want something elegant to look at and hold. There's also a digital version shops can load onto an iPad or big screen, which has become especially useful during COVID as funeral directors meet families outside the funeral home. And with cremation now past 50 percent, the book leans into memorial tributes and celebrations of life, not just traditional funeral pieces — a shift the whole industry should be watching.
Flower bundles and simplified specials
Audrey also runs the flower bundle program — farm-direct bouquets designed by Vonda that coordinate with arrangements already on members' websites, so shops "sell what they have and have what they sell." The program accelerated fast when COVID closed distribution centers and wholesalers ahead of Mother's Day 2020 and shops couldn't source flowers. Audrey learned international shipping from Ecuador and Colombia on the fly, worked through farm and FedEx logistics with the team's partners at Bill Doran Company, and now many members keep standing orders because it has simplified their ordering and designing.
The companion program, simplified specials, sends members a rotating weekly special — posted to their social media and Google My Business and featured on their website with banners — on an eight-week rotation so no two members run the same special the same week. Members just accept the flowers, sell them on the phone, and make the arrangements.
Customer service is taking the hard calls
Audrey wouldn't call herself a customer service person, but the hosts argue she embodies Flower Clique's culture of it: being willing to take the not-so-good calls, not just the easy ones. When a shipment misses the plane from Colombia to Miami, she picks up the phone. Her philosophy is simple — members are friends, mistakes should be owned, and complaints are feedback a business needs if it wants to improve. That mindset translates directly to any flower shop's front counter.
It takes a team
A running theme of the conversation: Vonda is the visionary who says "we need to build this rocket ship," and Audrey is the one who actually builds it — often with no instruction manual. Neither role works without the other. Recognizing each team member's giftedness, as the hosts put it, is what makes a well-rounded team.
Key takeaways
- Outsiders often see your business more clearly than you do — flower shop owners are defined by tenacity, passion, and the desire to touch people with their art.
- A sympathy or celebration of life book can open funeral home partnerships, but it must be top quality — and a digital version makes it even more flexible.
- Cremation and memorial services now outnumber traditional funerals; make sure your sympathy offerings reflect that.
- Good customer service means making the uncomfortable calls yourself, owning mistakes, and treating complaints as fuel for improvement.
- Great teams pair visionaries with builders — know which one you are and hire the other.
Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist